Marcion's Gospel

[Secret Alias]

You dispute that this is the correct summary of the purpose of Against Marcion:

Against Marcion was written to disprove the 'antitheses' of Marcion from the parts of Luke which Marcion retained after stealing and falsifying the gospel of Luke.

How so? What evidence is there to contradict this summary?

[Secret Alias]

The problem is that no one wants to actually read the book and try to summarize the literary purpose. Until then my summary is the only one.

[Ben C. Smith]

You dispute that this is the correct summary of the purpose of Against Marcion:

Against Marcion was written to disprove the 'antitheses' of Marcion from the parts of Luke which Marcion retained after stealing and falsifying the gospel of Luke.

How so? What evidence is there to contradict this summary?

I was referring to this post: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5822&p=104692y#p104692. It summarizes a lot more than that.

[Secret Alias]

Well what about the sentence?

[Secret Alias]

It took my 25 years to come up with that sentence.

[Ben C. Smith]

Well what about the sentence?

That sentence is not what I was addressing.

[John2]

Now, in the big picture, while I don't get the impression he was writing when Marcion was alive, Irenaeus seems to have at least been in a position to have heard things about Marcion (like Justin Martyr) by virtue of having been in Rome shortly after (and perhaps even during) the time of Hegesppus, who knew about Marcion and talked with prominent Christians while he was there. And while I haven't been persuaded that Irenaeus knew Hegesippus' writings, I don't rule it out, so he could have learned some things about Marcion that way too. So I definitely want to give what Irenaeus says about Marcion a closer look.

[Stuart]

Now, in the big picture, while I don't get the impression he was writing when Marcion was alive, Irenaeus seems to have at least been in a position to have heard things about Marcion (like Justin Martyr) by virtue of having been in Rome shortly after (and perhaps even during) the time of Hegesppus, who knew about Marcion and talked with prominent Christians while he was there. And while I haven't been persuaded that Irenaeus knew Hegesippus' writings, I don't rule it out, so he could have learned some things about Marcion that way too. So I definitely want to give what Irenaeus says about Marcion a closer look.

I'm not persuaded the writings under the name Irenaeus are

a) anything approaching a unity (I suspect 5 separate writers, and at least 3 layers of interpolation)
b) written before the middle of the 3rd century (There are many elements that point to a post 275 AD composition, some post 350 AD)
c) that Hegesippus existed outside of being the invention of a 3rd or 4th century writer then picked up in a compendium we call Eusubius
(Eusubius being basically a catch all of materials the church collected over the centuries -- the version we have is probably very late)

Perhaps some of these individuals existed. But their stories are intertwined with snippets of dogma and generic stories, retold with a specific target. One example of the repurposed is the "first born of Satan" (οὗτος πρωτότοκός ἐστι τοῦ σατανᾶ) from the supposed letter of Polycarp to a legend about Marcion, which also borrows elements from other tales such as Archimedes bath (Eureka! tale of using water displacement to measure density ... an apocryphal story as that method was already well known in his day - but easy to remember). The Polycarp letter of course is fraudulent as includes pastiches of NT epistles that were unlikely to have existed in Marcion's lifetime, sown together. It is a chicken and egg question about the origin of the phrase, but it seems derived from 1 John. The letter of Polycarp, like the Ignatian epistles was unknwon until the 4th century. This brings into grave doubt the source of the legend about Marcion at the bathes.

This is what is wrong with scholarship examining legends. There is a tendency to suspend belief and accept dubious sources. The old claim "there must be a kernel of truth" in the pile of poo. But like William Tell there may be none at all. Marcion's legend seems more like that of Robin Hood, possible a person of some local interest from which a giant legend grew. Both from those who took his name and claimed to be followers, and those took to undermine his authority. The same process of myth vs myth that surrounds the tales of Jesus, and also Paul and others.

[John2]

Regarding why Justin does not appear to have known of Marcion's writings, while I've seen it speculated that perhaps they weren't as important to him as they were to Irenaeus (assuming for the moment that the latter did know of them like he says), I wonder if instead it could be that they weren't published by the time Justin was writing. Perhaps the situation was similar to Plotinus, whose notes and essays weren't published until they were complied and edited by Porphyry towards the end of or shortly after Plotinus' life. In any event, being Marcion's contemporary and in a position to have heard things about him, Justin seems like a great source to me, and I don't have anything more to add about him than what I said upthread and here.

[John2]

Now, in the big picture, while I don't get the impression he was writing when Marcion was alive, Irenaeus seems to have at least been in a position to have heard things about Marcion (like Justin Martyr) by virtue of having been in Rome shortly after (and perhaps even during) the time of Hegesppus, who knew about Marcion and talked with prominent Christians while he was there. And while I haven't been persuaded that Irenaeus knew Hegesippus' writings, I don't rule it out, so he could have learned some things about Marcion that way too. So I definitely want to give what Irenaeus says about Marcion a closer look.

I'm not persuaded the writings under the name Irenaeus are

a) anything approaching a unity (I suspect 5 separate writers, and at least 3 layers of interpolation)
b) written before the middle of the 3rd century (There are many elements that point to a post 275 AD composition, some post 350 AD)
c) that Hegesippus existed outside of being the invention of a 3rd or 4th century writer then picked up in a compendium we call Eusubius
(Eusubius being basically a catch all of materials the church collected over the centuries -- the version we have is probably very late)

Perhaps some of these individuals existed. But their stories are intertwined with snippets of dogma and generic stories, retold with a specific target. One example of the repurposed is the "first born of Satan" (οὗτος πρωτότοκός ἐστι τοῦ σατανᾶ) from the supposed letter of Polycarp to a legend about Marcion, which also borrows elements from other tales such as Archimedes bath (Eureka! tale of using water displacement to measure density ... an apocryphal story as that method was already well known in his day - but easy to remember). The Polycarp letter of course is fraudulent as includes pastiches of NT epistles that were unlikely to have existed in Marcion's lifetime, sown together. It is a chicken and egg question about the origin of the phrase, but it seems derived from 1 John. The letter of Polycarp, like the Ignatian epistles was unknwon until the 4th century. This brings into grave doubt the source of the legend about Marcion at the bathes.

This is what is wrong with scholarship examining legends. There is a tendency to suspend belief and accept dubious sources. The old claim "there must be a kernel of truth" in the pile of poo. But like William Tell there may be none at all. Marcion's legend seems more like that of Robin Hood, possible a person of some local interest from which a giant legend grew. Both from those who took his name and claimed to be followers, and those took to undermine his authority. The same process of myth vs myth that surrounds the tales of Jesus, and also Paul and others.

That's one way to look at everything, I guess, and I figure it must work for you.